To ensure reliability, a manufacturer of hard-disk drives subjects a hard-disk drive to rigorous tests, including Quality Assurance (QA) processes. In a conventional QA process, a test client (that typically includes a test application) at a manufacturer's QA facility performs a set of sequential reads and sequential writes on a hard-disk drive under test. The test client can also perform random reads and writes at random locations on the hard-disk drive under test. If a hard-disk drive under test correctly performs the requested reads and writes from the test client, the hard-disk drive under test is allowed to pass QA inspection and is shipped to a customer or to an intermediate entity that re-brands or integrates the hard-disk drive into a larger system.
However, conventional QA processes do not accurately determine whether a hard-disk drive is likely to fail at a customer site. The mere determination of whether a hard-disk drive under test is like to perform sequential and random read and write operations is insufficient to simulate the actual performance of the hard-disk drive in the field. The use of conventional QA processes is therefore likely to lead to defective drives being shipped to customer sites, sometimes with disastrous consequences, particularly in enterprise applications.